News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1887-08-11
STARVATION IN LABRADOR.
Thrilling Narrative of Want and
Suffering on The Coast.

Rev: Frank W. col,sy, missionary at
La, labrador, i: writes ma ter giving a
tuition prevailing there He has travel
led the whole coast and declares that
words cannot describe the sufferings of
the poor. He tells of families of help
less old people and equally helpless
children enduring the rigors of the late
winter, with the thermometer 80 degrees
below zero, living in huts, sleeping on
bare ground, covered only with old sails,
and subsisting on rock cod, the poorest
kind of Goldfish known, and on hard
tack supplied by the Government. To
catch the fish the perishing people had
to travel five miles o-er bare rocks.
Bread, tea, molasses, flour, meat of any
kind or any of the necessities of life are
unknown to them. Slow starvation had
driven the father of one family mad,
and the poor wretch had been trying to
eat his own boots. The puny cod for
breakfast, dinner and supper, weeks
upon weeks and months upon months,
while keeping the poor wretches from
actual death, only served to be a daily
torture to them, and was ofitself enough
to drive the whole population into raw
ing maniacs.
Missionary Colley declares that he
was implored for help at every, second
house visited in all the vast region. The
inhabitants were driven to such desper-
ate straits that wives and mothers even
had to sell their wedding rings for
bread. At Grady's Stable Bay, Rocky
Bay, Spotted Island and Seal Island
whole families were slowly starving in
January. How they existed through
the winter God only knows. The scan
ty aid sent by the Newfoundland Gov
ernment was distributed before half the
winter was over. Mr.. Colley declares
that only fear of repetition of the ter
rible suffering induces him now to make
the terrible facts public.
A large portion of the coast is sealed
up by ice all winter long, and navigation
at Cartwright, the missionary's home,
closed in October last and remained so
until the middle of June.
1t is impossible for the few who have
money to get supplies in winter. The
missionary himself accompanied two
men one hundred miles over the rocky
wilderness to get two barrels of -four,
but could not get them. Twenty miles
further on they got one barrel of the
commonest kind as great favorby pay
ing 50. 80. In times past the people of
Labrador lived ON the fat of the land;
game in variety and seals were abund-
ant, but nov tha%e also have failed.
The missionary o g,y,claaa7~-S ri'rse5~r-T7f--
umn narrative bC EzIanding in the
name of humanity thnt the Newfound-
land Government Immediately send re-
lief to that district and also provide
means for transporting the wretched peo-
to some other country.
The official organ of the Government
of Newfoundland comments ON the mis-
sionary's revelations as an honest and
truthful account by one who has shared
the terrible privations of the people in
the exercise of his sacred calling. This
paper, which few months ago relent-
lessly denied that any unusual distress
existed at Labrador, is now filed with
astonishment" to find that human be-
ings should be able to prolong existence
amid such suffering and want.